Carleton Players: THE RESISTIBLE RISE of ARTURO UI

Who do you call when you need protection? Arturo Ui. But who do you call when you need protection from Arturo Ui? Chicago, 1930s: the “Cauliflower Trust” is making a move to conquer the vegetable trade when petty criminal Arturo Ui concocts his protection racket. After a reign of terror, Ui emerges as an undisputed mob boss and king of the vegetable monopoly. Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is much more than a simple gangland comedy, however. Written in the early 1940s, the play is also a thinly veiled allegory of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, told through the borrowed plot of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Not least, it is a cautionary tale of unchecked political ambition and power – a reminder for our own times that our own Arturo Ui’s are resistible.